I don’t like the Fourth of July much. I hate fireworks, sand, sun, sunscreen, bugs, alcoholic beverages and obligatory partying. I do like the idea of the day. But I have baggage. It has to do with barbecue. There is a problem I have with the whole nature of the particular phylum of food.
I had a terrible experience with a barbecue dish, one night in Kansas City, in the middle of a tour. I knew little of the cuisine of this part of the country, but I trusted the local opinion. We were told this was the best barbecue in the Midwest. It looked beautiful. Big, broiled ribs sauced with sensual abandon, a wild freedom of hand on bottle, beef in sauce. The inviting slab of meat was tenderly covered with two slices of white bread, like a little roof of carbohydrates on the powerhouse of proteins and fat. The box actually sizzled when I held it in my hands. But, it was the middle of the night and I was too sleepy to eat, so I left the beautiful box of meat with its scintillating smells and sweet barbecue promise out on the formica counter in my kitchenette. I couldn’t bear to refrigerate it. I could only lay it gently onto the cool surface. It was with great anticipation that I left it for the morning.
When I woke, the entire room smelled great. Like a burnt smoky caramel piece of heaven, no longer sizzling alive with fire, now a dormant volcano of hardened sauce like glistening lava cooling in the morning air. The white bread was still pristine and soft, fresh but somehow infused with the heady scent of barbecue. I relished my cold breakfast of ribs and ate the entire box.
I felt rustic, like a woodcutter, like it was cold enough to see my breath. The air was like pure maple syrup, and it felt like I had taken hollow tubes and plunged them into trees and left buckets to hang and catch the sap, as I sat to wait to fill my pails in the sugar shack, enjoying the silence of the early dawn, sucking the meat off the bones of last night’s dinner. But as I emerged from the sugar shack/motel room I knew there was something wrong.
That barbecue taste clung to my mouth, and if it was pleasant at first, it rapidly became extremely unpleasant. This was my first warning that something was terribly amiss. I had made a bad mistake. I paid for that mistake multiple times over for the next several days. It was the kind of food poisoning that inconveniences everyone around you, friends, strangers, countrymen – causes incredible delays and setbacks, unaffordable during the time crunch of a tour. This is the botulism that keeps on giving.
I will have barbecue baggage forever. It is a curse, as it was one of my favorite things to eat, especially the kind that you get in South Carolina, the mustard based ‘que. I feel I have lost a friend, not through a natural event like moving or even death, but betrayal. I have been betrayed by barbecue. I have baggage that is heavy, that I will not ever let go of. This barbecue baggage has become a part of me, and I do not know where I stop and it begins.